US 2025/0019223 A1Published application

Electrostatically-excited hermetic multi-cell microelectromechanical actuator and production method thereof

AssigneeKaunas University of Technology

InventorsDarius VIRZONIS, Gailius VANAGAS, MIndaugas DZIKARAS, Dovydas BARAUSKAS, Donatas PELENIS, Marius MIKOLAJUNAS

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Abstract

Electrostatically-excited hermetic multi-cell microelectromechanical actuator and production method thereof The present invention discloses an electrostatically excited microelectromechanical actuator and its fabrication method. The structure of the actuator comprises a set of electrostatic-capacitive cells that, when electrostatically excited, create local torques. The perimeter-fixed and excited cell structure deforms in a variety of ways in the vertical direction over a range of several or tens of micrometers, thus allowing to perform functions of an AFM sensor or micro-fluidic controls. The advantages of such a perimeter clamped structure are higher operating frequencies, higher AFM imaging throughput and higher output energies. Also, it is inherently hermetic, making it less sensitive to contamination and it is less damped when the actuator operates in liquids. All embodiments of the invention can be fabricated using CMOS-compatible MEMS micromachining technology based on wafer bonding and bulk micromachining processes.

Claims13

Dependent claims

An electrostatically excited microelectromechanical actuator comprising at least

an actuator membrane with a first electrode (104),
a plate-shaped deformable element (110) with a second electrode (125), and
supporting elements (123, 126) separating the deformable element (110) and the actuator membrane (120) with a vacuum gap (121) and combining them into an electrostatically excited two-layer structure,
wherein the supporting elements (123, 126) divide this structure into more than one hermetic cells, hermetically separated by closed lines of the supporting elements (123, 126), where a closed line of the supporting elements (123, 126) of each cell comprises at least two segments, wherein
a first segment is an anchor support (126) not changing due to deformations of the deformable element (124, 110) and/or the actuator membrane (120) during electrostatic attraction, and
a second segment is the rest part of the supporting element (123), which deforms due to the deformations of the actuator membrane (120) occurring during electrostatic attraction, thereby creating in the cell a local torque (127), which deforms the deformable element (110) of the actuator.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.